


A Chemical Romance

by franks_hands



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Cancer, M/M, kind of character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-21
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-02-14 04:34:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 11,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2178108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/franks_hands/pseuds/franks_hands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don't want to keep ignoring the subject. I need closure. Maybe it'll hurt less."</p><p>The story of Gerard Way and Frank Iero, as told by Mikey Way</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

My therapist put me up to this.  
Well--my old therapist. I’ve since stopped seeing him, and for a long time, the idea of closure through writing down my story--my brother’s story, I mean--has lingered in the back of my head.  
I thought it was a stupid idea, to be honest. I couldn’t see how in the world dwelling on the past, on someone I miss so damn much, could possibly help me deal with the pain. It seemed easier to just stop thinking about it for a while; form new relationships, meet new people, live new stories. Stories with happier endings.  
But I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a certain man--his name is Frank Iero.   
The truth is, I haven’t seen him in almost four years. I wish I knew where he lives now, but when he moved, he didn’t even give me a call let alone leave me with a new address.  
The last time I saw Frank, we were in his old apartment, which had grown messy and dirty over the past month. Frank was usually such a clean person.   
I had asked him something. Something about my brother, I can’t really remember what, and he’d just shrugged, eyes going blank, and then he was walking away from me, into his bedroom. When he returned, there was a box in his arms. He set it on the ground beside me feet, didn’t say anything.   
There was a pillow in the box, underneath a sketch pad, some pencils, a couple of wadded-up t-shirts, and some folded papers. I picked at one of the papers, unfolding it to find my brother’s messy handwriting. It was like a punch in the gut, but I just frowned at it and folded it back up, letting it drop back into the box.  
“You don’t want to keep these notes?” I asked him.   
He shook his head, “No point.”   
My heart sank. “No point? I mean… the t-shirts, though. Those were practically yours, anyway.”  
“They smell like.” His sentence ended abruptly. The last word should have been him. It was as if the word alone would cause him to break out in a nasty rash.  
I stared down at the box of my brother’s belongings. I felt as sad as Frank looked. “I can’t take this stuff, man.”  
He stared at me, silent for a long time before he nodded and said, “You have to. I don’t want them.”  
“Don’t you think he’d want you to, like…” I shrugged, “Remember him?”  
But after that, he never said another word to me. He just stood there, still, silent, a frown on his face. I couldn’t really tell what he was staring at, but I thought it was the small pile of folded notes.   
After a few futile attempts to pull some more words out of him, I gave up and picked up the box, inching toward the door, eyes still on Frank.   
The last thing I said to him was, “See you on Saturday.” The funeral was on Saturday.  
He didn’t attend the funeral.  
It’s the way he acted that I’ve been thinking about so much lately. When my brother died, Frank’s mind seemed to shut off. He was distant, cut off from everybody else, silent. His signature grin, that stretch of pink lips and the somehow mischievous gleam of his lip ring, like a sly wink, had vanished.   
He wasn’t in the room when my brother died--he wasn’t even at the hospital. And I think that made it a lot easier for him to pretend that it never actually happened. That he’d never even met my brother.   
Frank couldn’t say his name anymore. Most of the time, he couldn’t even manage to utter the word him in reference to my brother.  
To see Frank withdraw like that hurt. I’d only known him for six months, but he’d managed to become my closest friend--bar my brother. And it was so painfully obvious that he was dying on the inside. He kept himself quite composed; I saw him shed tears only twice after my brother died. His stubborn attitude about the whole thing, though, the way he refused to talk about it, seemed to refuse to even think about it… it only served to make things harder for him.  
How the hell was he supposed to get over my brother’s death if he refused to accept that fact that it actually happened?  
That’s why I’m writing this. I don’t want to be like Frank. I don’t want to keep ignoring the subject. I need closure. Maybe it’ll hurt less.  
Maybe not.  
But maybe the pain will be easier to handle.  
I wish I could find Frank. I wish I could help him find closure.


	2. Frank Iero

The first time I met Frank, he didn't have a stitch of clothing on his body.  
He was sprawled out on Gerard’s bed, and he was reading a comic book when I barged into the room without knocking.   
I yelped because yeah, I had busted in to find Gerard changing before, but he was my brother and the tattooed punk kid on my brother’s bed definitely wasn’t Gerard and he definitely wasn’t clothed.   
I had a hand over my eyes. Frank chuckled and muttered a smooth, “Oh hey, you must be Mikey.”  
I peaked through my fingers. he had pulled the blankets up over himself. I nearly sighed with relief. “You must be Frank.”   
Gerard’s bathroom door opened and then he was walking out, shrieking, “Mikey! Get out!” because he wasn’t clothed either. Jesus.  
And that whole incident made things awkward for a while.  
For me, at least. Frank didn’t seem to be fazed by it. And that was how he was most of the time. Nothing fazed Frank Iero. He just rolled with the punches, took whatever came to him, went with it, never let anything ruin his fun. He liked to have fun. He liked to grin and crack crude jokes and giggle and climb all over Gerard and climb all over me because apparently he didn’t have any sense of personal space whatsoever.  
Frank was like a little dog--loud and obnoxious but incredibly endearing and annoyingly lovable. A lot of the time I wanted to punch him. But a lot of the time I wanted to kiss him, too.  
Not in a romantic way. In a thank you so fucking much for making my brother this happy kind of way. I had never wanted to kiss someone in that kind of way before. It felt great.  
Frank was one of the most laid back people I’ve met in my life. I swear that if Gerard had cheated on him, he would have just kind of shrugged and said, “It’s okay, Gee. Just don’t do it again, please?”  
He didn’t like to argue. Not seriously, anyway. He got heated sometimes, and even yelled occasionally when the three of us were talking about comics or bands or movies or something else of a trivial nature. But he never got too angry, never took it too seriously. He and Gerard never fought, not even once.  
A lot changed about Frank after Gerard died, though.   
It was like the carefree, always-happy punk kid had been just an act he’d kept up; just a mask that had concealed any anger or hurt he felt. And when Gerard was gone that mask was gone too.  
When I called Frank with the news, he didn’t really say anything. I told him that it had happened, and then he was silent for the longest time. After a while, I asked if he was alright. It was a stupid question. Of course he wasn’t alright. He’d been at the hospital almost constantly during the past week, but the one day that he couldn’t make it was the day that it happened. And that didn’t even matter; the news would have stung terribly anyway.   
But he whispered, “Yeah. Just. Don’t hang up, okay?” So I didn’t hang up, and we just sat there on the phone for almost half an hour, exchanging nothing but the sound of heavy silence and quiet breathing. And that felt weird, completely wrong. I was on the phone with Frank and he wasn’t talking my ear off. He wasn’t rambling at a hundred miles per hour about a date he and Gerard had just gone on or about a gig he’d just played. He was just silent, no words to say. I cried a little bit and I was sure he could hear me, but he still didn’t say anything. His breaths didn’t even change.  
The next morning when I pulled myself painfully up the stairs to force breakfast into my mouth--despite my lack of appetite--I found Frank sitting at the kitchen table, silent as my mom spoke to him and made pancakes. Her eyes were misty. His were empty.  
The three of us ate breakfast in silence. Dad was in his room, mom had told me. He’d be out later. Probably.   
After we ate, I asked Frank if he wanted to go downstairs with me. He didn’t stay for long, though, because we got into the first fight I ever saw Frank participate in.  
There was screaming and tears and he even tried to punch me at one point. As he left my room, he pushed a clay unicorn I had sculpted in high school--the only successful piece of art I had ever made--off of a shelf. It shattered as it hit the floor, pieces scattering.  
He never apologized for that.


	3. Meeting Frank

Gerard met Frank at a coffee shop.  
I snorted when Gerard told me that.  
It was the coffee shop across the street from the hospital. Gerard had just gotten tests done, something none of us were too concerned about. He’d had a million tests before and they’d already taken care of the cancer so this one was probably just an extra precaution. Nothing to worry about.  
Frank’s bronchitis had been flaring up and he’d been at the hospital getting his lungs checked out. He was the one to approach Gerard.  
With a cheesy, absolutely horrible, makes-me-puke-a-little-in-my-mouth pick-up line.  
“It could be my chronic bronchitis, but I think you just took my breath away.”  
I hit Gerard on the head when he told me he’d actually gone on a date with a guy who had used a pick-up line on him.  
Awful pick-up lines aside, Gerard became enamored with Frank immediately. They talked at the coffee shop for almost two hours, about Frank’s bronchitis and Gerard’s battle with cancer (which at that time we thought had been over and won) and music and comic books and super heroes. Frank basically had everything Gerard had ever dreamed of--he even had tattoos and played guitar.  
When I returned home from college on the other side of the state, three weeks after they met, Frank was all Gerard could talk about. And, as annoying as it got, it was kind of awesome to watch, a smile sneaking across Gee’s lips as if he didn’t even realize it. He blushed a lot more than I ever remembered him blushing before. Suddenly, everything seemed to have a connection to his new boyfriend.  
His first boyfriend in a long, long time that didn’t have some major flaw.  
I had a list of dudes in the back of my mind, seeming to grow every year, who had hurt Gerard and who, if ever given the chance, I would treat with a solid right hook to their jaw.  
Bert cared more about his drugs than he cared about Gerard.  
Pete cheated on Gerard with everyone and their sister.  
Brendon led Gerard on for months just because he didn’t have the balls to break up with him.  
Ray decided, after six months of dating Gerard, that he wasn’t actually into guys.  
And Bob was a physically and mentally abusive asshole. (Okay so I wouldn’t punch him but that’s just because he would slam me on the ground before I even got a chance.)  
But Frank? Frank couldn’t so much as yell at Gerard, he would so obviously do anything for him, he was honest to the point of accidentally offending people, and he didn’t even smoke anymore because it had gotten “too damn hard to breathe”.  
I couldn’t pick out a single major flaw, no matter how hard I tried. And I tried. I really, really tried to find a flaw for the first week or two that I knew him. I watched him closely, listened to everything he said, soaked up everything he did in an attempt to find something that I wanted to keep my brother far, far away from.  
But there was nothing.  
After about a week, even I was caving, finding it hard to keep scrutinizing him because when we talked, I wanted to laugh with him, have a good time and not worry about how he could potentially hurt my brother in the future. If there was one thing Frank had, it was charisma.  
I couldn’t not become his best friend.  
Gerard couldn't not fall in love with him.


	4. Notes

I mentioned in my introduction my last meeting with Frank in his apartment, at which he gave me a box of my brother’s belongings, including a pile of folded hand-written notes that the two had exchanged.

It turned out, I only got half of the notes. Just the ones with my brother’s handwriting. I’m not sure why Frank didn’t force the notes that he’d written upon me. Maybe he only gave me the ones my brother had written because they were Gerard’s notes. He couldn’t keep anything that was Gerard’s because he didn’t want to remember Gerard. He wanted to forget Gerard ever happened.

The notes he’d written Gerard were fine to keep, though, because they were his notes, not Gerard’s notes.

For a long time, these notes stayed in that box Frank had put them in. I’d taken out most of the stuff--the pillow, the pencils, the t-shirts--but the sketch book and the notes stayed in the box which, for a while, stayed in my room at my parents’ house and then in the storage closet of my first apartment, and most recently in the attic of my current house.

The first thing I touched when I got home after the last time I visited Frank was the sketchbook. I flipped through it a few times, finding sketches I was already familiar with--sketches Gerard had done in my presence, and sketches I hadn’t seen of me, of Frank, of little vampire guys Gee used to call Dracs. For a few weeks, I kept the sketchbook in the drawer of my nightstand, but I put it back in the box because it wasn’t of any actual use to me.

The notes, I decided I wouldn’t read. They were personal, something that was meant to be between Frank and Gerard only, not for anyone else’s eyes and especially not for the eyes of a brother.

But I pulled them out recently, figuring that if Frank had really had a strong opposition to me reading the notes, he wouldn’t have given them to me in the first place. He could have burned them or something. And Gerard, well, he used to share so much with me (often much more than I wanted shared with me), so I figured he wouldn’t have minded too much if I read them.

And so I did read them.

They reminded me that I wasn’t with Gerard and Frank all the time; I wasn’t actually part of their relationship. I was just on the sidelines, observing and watching it all happen. I didn’t get the whole picture--only scattered parts of it.

The notes tell a chunk of Frank and Gerard’s story that I can’t possibly tell on my own.

 

_Hi so this is awkward because I’m sitting right across from you but I wanted to tell you that I really like you but I’m too nervous to say it out loud so instead I’m writing it on this stupid napkin_

_(also will you be my boyfriend please)_

This note is written on a napkin in pen. There is a little cartoon sketch of who I assume is Gerard, blushing with his hands covering his eyes.

From what I can tell, it is the first note of all of the notes Frank gave me.

I’ve always assumed that Frank had been the one to ask Gerard to be his boyfriend.

 

_Good morning! (I assume it will be morning when you read this)_

_It’s midnight right now and Mikey called me because his car broke down so I need to go pick him up before he gets like murdered on the side of the highway or something. But last night was really really really awesome._

_(LIKE REALLY AWESOME)_

_So call me please._

_xoxo G_

       I remember the night my car broke down on the highway. Gerard showed up almost an hour after I called him and neither one of us were happy with each other. He was pissed off that I had made him leave his boyfriend, I was pissed off that he was pissed off and also that he’d made me wait so long at nearly one in the morning on the side of the highway. We bitched each other out the whole ride home.

       That night had been at least a month after Gerard first met Frank, so there was a considerable amount of time between when the first note was written and when this one was written.

       At the bottom right corner of the lined piece of paper this note is written on, there is a cartoon drawing of me on the ground next to my car, X’s over my eyes and my tongue hanging out of my mouth.

       Next to the line “ _(LIKE REALLY AWESOME)_ ” there is a winking smiley face.

 

I’m not sure when the third note was written. It is short and simple.

_I love you, Frankie. xoxo G_

       The paper is one ripped out of a sketchbook, and below the few words is a sketch of Frank sleeping, tangled in blankets.

 

_Good morning, sorry I ditched you again. I completely forgot I had an appointment thing (doctors being overly-cautious even though my cancer’s gone) and Mikey called because he was gonna go with me and I didn’t show up, blah blah blah…_

_But yeah, I love you (duh) and your parents will come around soon. I can feel it. Just give them those puppy-dog eyes you always give me and they’ll cave. No one can resist that face._

_Love you. xoxo G_

       Frank’s parents were extremely religious and were convinced that Frank had chosen to be gay just to piss them off. When he’d brought Gerard to dinner with them one night, they’d blown up at him, right in front of Gerard. I remember Gerard telling me about it, worried wrinkles interrupting the smooth skin over his forehead.

       If I’m remembering correctly, the appointment Gerard referred to in this note was the first appointment after he’d gotten the scan that revealed the cancer that we thought was gone was still in him, and had spread at a rapid rate to more parts of his body. A lot of his body. The appointment he was going to when he wrote this note was when we were told that yes, they could fight the cancer, but that fighting the cancer would most likely be futile. Gerard was going to die from it. And probably within two months.

       Next to “ _…even though my cancer’s gone)_ ” there is an angry face.

       Next to where Gerard wrote “ _puppy-dog eyes_ ” there is a small cartoon drawing of Frank pouting with big, round eyes.

 

_I can’t sleep so I’m sketching and writing this note which you’ll read in the morning while I sit next to you awkwardly._

_I love you. A lot. So much._

_Also I’m sorry I freaked out a little when you mentioned moving in together and getting married and kids and stuff._

_Just. I don’t really like to think about the future, I guess. I’m more of a day-by-day kind of guy. Y’know. Sorry._

_Um. So here’s a drawing of us. xoxo G_

       Below is a cartoon sketch of Gerard and Frank at a booth in a coffee shop, a smirk on Frank’s face as a speech bubble above him reads, “ _It could be my chronic bronchitis, but I think you just took my breath away_ ”. Gerard is blushing, his eyes comically wide.

       The thought of Frank attempting to talk about the future with Gerard makes me sad. Gerard knew they couldn’t have a future together. Frank didn’t know that yet.

 

_I’m sorry, Frankie. I’m really really really sorry. I know I should have told you as soon as I knew. I’m really really really really really sorry. Really really sorry._

_But if it makes it any better, I was just trying to make things better for you. I didn’t want you to have to worry about me. I wanted us to be able to have this awesome thing without constantly having to worry about the fact that I’m dying. I didn’t want it to hinder what we have. ‘Cause I really really like what we have, Frankie. I love you so much. I just thought it would be nice to pretend for a while that we’re normal and that everything’s okay and that we’re gonna like grow old together or whatever. And I knew you wouldn’t be able to do that if you knew I’m dying._

_I’m really really sorry._

_I’m gonna be at my parent’s house if you need me. But if you don’t want to be my boyfriend anymore, I understand I guess. (Not that I’m okay with that, but. Y’know. I’ll understand.)_

_I love you a lot._

_xoxo G_

       There are no cartoon drawings on this one. The paper is warped slightly in a few spots.

 

 


	5. Falling for a Sick Boy

Being in any kind of relationship--brother, mother, friend, lover--with someone who has two months to live is draining. You watch your loved one deteriorate before your eyes. It’s torture.

For me, the worst part wasn’t watching him die. It was watching him grow weaker and weaker before everything just stopped for him. I would have rather him died quickly and painlessly while he was still strong, still lively. Those extra months I got with my brother weren’t even worth the pain he suffered.

Back when he’d had his first bout of cancer, when the doctors said it was terminal, we had both accepted that he was going to die young. And even though he’d survived that battle, while we thought we were in the clear, it was still lingering there in the back of our minds--our acceptance of his mortality. So the second time it happened, the diagnosis of an imminent young death was an easier pill to swallow. The second time around, it was more about his pain that it was about him dying.

Frank wasn’t worried about any of that, though. He wasn’t worried about Gerard dying, he wasn’t worried about the aches and pains Gerard felt all over that got worse every day.

Because Frank didn’t know that Gerard still had cancer and he didn’t know that his boyfriend only had an estimation of two months to live.

So that was the thing. Frank was affected by Gerard’s terminal illness, but he didn’t know it. He was affected at first in small ways and then later on in more significant ways, but for the most part, he didn’t know what he was really being affected by.

For a while, it was just those aches Gerard had, the ones that were all over his body, and the exhaustion he felt after simple tasks like walking up a couple flights of stairs. Those things affected the relationship in small ways. Frank always held doors open for Gerard--not necessarily to be a gentleman, but because Gerard seemed to have trouble keeping heavy doors open for himself sometimes. Gerard would sometimes hang onto Frank when they walked up long flights of stairs.

One night, Gerard told me that he and Frank had had to change positions in bed because Gerard would get to the point where he couldn’t even hold himself up anymore, “And not in a good way,” he said.

Frank could have chalked it up to Gerard merely being really out of shape. Most of the time, Gerard could pass as a relatively healthy person.

Frank thought Gerard was a relatively healthy person. He didn’t know, as Gerard did, that Gerard was probably not going to make it to next year. All he knew was that they were in love and that he wanted to spend possibly the rest of his life with Gerard.

So he talked quite a lot about the future.

He wanted Gerard to move in with him. He wanted to get married to Gerard. He wanted to adopt kids. He had the rest of his life planned out, and Gerard made up half of that plan.

But Gerard, understandably, never wanted to talk about the future. There wasn’t one for him. And he couldn’t tell Frank that. Wouldn’t tell Frank that. So he came across as disinterested sometimes when Frank began to talk about the future. After Gerard died, Frank told me how much that had hurt him--how much Gerard seemed to not care about their future together. He never would have shown that to Gerard. He kept the mask on while he still thought Gerard was healthy.

It was when Frank found out that it really hit him hard. It was like the pain and worry he should have been feeling since the day we all found out Gerard’s cancer was back had been building up in the back of his brain without his knowing, and now that he’d been told the news, he was feeling all of that at once--three months worth of it.

Their relationship became just what Gerard didn’t want it to be: Gerard was sick and Frank was worried about him. Gerard was suddenly Frank’s largest concern, occupying the majority of his thoughts; caring for Gerard, making sure Gerard was comfortable, became almost an obsession.

Which was alright for the most part. It had been how we all were when Gerard had gotten cancer the first time. He never had to lift a finger because there was always someone there helping him, whether it was mom or dad or me or a boyfriend. And Gerard really liked that, being taken care of.

The problem came along when Frank started to forget about his own needs in order to better take care of Gerard’s needs. He stopped eating, and not because he was depressed but simply because he was too busy worrying about Gerard. His face became worn with worried lines on his forehead, his mouth was almost constantly pulled in a tight, unpleasant line. He still laughed and talked with Gerard, but it seemed forced. It felt genuine yet off by a beat or two. As if it was a delay on a live broadcast.

He was hanging on for dear life to that mask of his, keeping it on while Gerard was awake because he couldn’t let Gerard see him how he really felt.

I could see how he felt during the last week or two when Gerard was asleep in his hospital room, when Frank sat there and stared at him, exhausted but refusing to sleep--another necessity of his that he seemed to forget about. His eyes were ringed red and he cried a lot, even when I was watching.

He cried a lot more while Gerard was dying than he did after Gerard died.

There was one night that he was there with Mom and I, and when Mom left the room for a moment, he scooted his chair in front of mine so that our knees were touching, Gerard sleeping to my left and his right.

He looked at Gerard once and then looked at me, “It hurts a lot.”

I nodded.

“I don’t like seeing him dying but I can’t get myself to not come and see him. I have to see him. I have to be with him for as long as I can.”

I swallowed. I didn’t know what to say. I had never been good at proving comfort. And frankly, I didn’t have any comfort to provide. I was in just as much pain as he was and I wasn’t even sure that there was anything in the world that would make the whole thing any less horrible. We were losing Gerard. Nothing could fix that or make it any degree better.

“I hate this.” He was whispering now, face turned to stare at Gerard. “I hate this so much.” He was crying.

 

 


	6. Falling for a Healthy Boy

Frank’s band didn’t really tour, but they played a lot of gigs around New Jersey. Gerard went to most of them.

Back in high school, Gerard and I went to a lot of concerts together. They’re all the same in my memory--Gerard finding some sketchy guy to buy us alcohol, sweating against strangers, being poked and elbowed and groped by a someone (could never really tell who), ears ringing as we walked through the dark downtown streets to find Gerard’s car (it was difficult when we were both slightly drunk).

When Gerard moved to New York to attend the School of Visual Arts, I went to a lot of concerts with my lame high school friends and he went to a lot with his cool college friends.

Rock concerts were like our second home.

But that stopped when Gerard came home from his third year of college diagnosed with cancer. There were a few concerts we went to after the diagnosis, but between treatment and Gerard’s overall exhaustion and other physical discomfort, concerts just weren’t a pleasant thing for him anymore.

There was one week everyone was convinced Gerard wouldn’t see the end of. It was one of the last weeks before he was cleared.

“We should go to one more concert.” He had told me, even though we both were certain he wouldn’t be leaving that hospital bed alive. “‘Cause I’m really gonna miss that.”

When Gerard became healthy again, the first thing he did was buy a bunch of concert tickets. Those were the best concerts I’ve ever been to and I can’t even remember what bands were playing.

The worst concert I’ve ever been to was one Frank played.

It was a couple of weeks after the second terminal diagnosis. Gerard wasn’t feeling well when we left the house but he refused to stay home. He’d told Frank he was going to be there so he was going to be there.

It was during Frank’s band’s set that Gerard told me he was going to hang out in the crowd for a little bit. “I won’t go too far up, I promise.” He’d yelled over the music. My stomach clenched. I didn’t like the idea. He could see it on my face, “Come on, Mikes. If I’m going to die I might as well have some fun first.” So he went.

Only to stagger back to the bar ten minutes later, appearing way too intoxicated for the amount of alcohol he’d consumed. And that’s because he wasn’t intoxicated. He was about to pass out.

“Mikey.” His voice was breathy as he leaned on me. “I don’t--I don’t feel good. I--” And then his legs buckled. I caught him under the armpits and called for someone who knew what the hell they were doing to help him.

It scared the shit out of me.

When he came to later, the first thing he asked was, “Where’s Frank?”

And the second thing was, “You won’t tell him, will you?”

I never told Frank about Gerard passing out at one of his concerts. I’m not sure if Gerard ever told him that story. I have a feeling he didn’t.

When we drove home that night, Frank crashed in the back seat. Playing always exhausted him.

Gerard looked over his shoulders at his boyfriend, just to make sure that he was asleep, “Y’know it kinda sucks seeing him play.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. Frank playing at a show had once been all Gerard could talk about it. How he threw himself around, screamed into the mic, spit into the crowd; how he emerged from each show bruised and sore and so completely alive.

“It just makes me jealous.” He whispered. “Y’know. How he can bounce around like that.”

There was a long silence.

“I really, really wish I could do that. But. Y’know. Can’t.”

I rolled my eyes at him, “You could, Gee. You used to always play. You’d just need a little more practice and you could--”

“No. I mean… how he moves on stage. I wish I could do that. I wish I wasn’t dying so I could…” But his words trailed off and he fell silent. It took me a minute or two to realize that he was crying.

 

 


	7. Results

Gerard had spent the night at Frank’s apartment but he’d promised to meet me at home, 6AM sharp so that we could go out for breakfast and then head to the health center together. This was the day the test results came in. We weren’t worried about it. His cancer was gone. We were in the clear; the doctors just wanted to be cautious.  
But 6:30AM came around and Gerard wasn’t home yet. I called him, waking him in bed.  
“Shit. Shit, sorry. Just. Lemme write Frank a note then I’ll be there in like ten.”   
He didn’t show up for another thirty minutes. And by that time, we were almost running late to the appointment, so we didn’t stop for breakfast. Both of our stomachs were rumbling as we sat in a waiting room. We talked about Frank--I don’t really remember specifics, but we talked about Frank a lot back then because Gerard thought about Frank a lot.  
When the doctor greeted us and pulled us into a small room there was this tightness in my gut. He had a smile plastered on his face but it wasn’t the kind I liked to see. It wasn’t the same smile he’d been wearing when he gave Gerard the news the year before--the news that the cancer was gone.  
I don’t remember how the appointment went, exactly, but I remember the line between the doctor’s eyebrows as he told us, “We’re going to have to do a scan. The results were… not really what we expected.”   
Gerard was frowning, but he nodded.   
“Everything’s okay.” He told me, just before he went in for the scan.  
Everything wasn’t okay.   
The cancer wasn’t gone. It was the opposite of gone. It had spread to places it hadn’t touched before. Gerard’s body was riddled with it. I nearly puked when the doctor showed us the scan.  
“I’m afraid… Well, I’m afraid there’s a problem, Mr. Way.”  
A wave of nausea came over me.   
Telling Mom and Dad was the worst part. The look on their faces. Their questions.  
“No.” Gerard had said to Mom, “No, mom, it’s… it’s a lot worse than last time. It’s so much worse.”


	8. Selfish

The day Frank found out about Gerard’s second diagnosis, Gerard was out at an appointment.  
That morning, Gerard and I had a long argument over Frank. I thought he needed to be told. Gerard had already passed the two month mark and his death could potentially come any week now. And Frank still thought he was in relatively good health.  
The last thing I wanted was for Frank to find out when Gerard was hospitalized for the last time. Gerard wanted to put it off a little longer.  
“You don’t have any longer to put it off!” I had screamed at him, which I still regret to this day. It was a horrible thing to say to someone who was about to die.  
It was only twenty minutes after Gerard left that Frank rolled up the driveway in his truck. I hadn’t asked him to come over, it hadn’t been planned. Frank didn’t know Gerard was out.   
I saw my chance and took it. This could possibly be the last time I caught Frank alone, with Gerard unable to stop me from giving him the news.   
“He’s not here.” I called when Frank whizzed right past me in the kitchen, headed toward the basement.  
Frank frowned, “Oh. Where is he?”  
“I need to tell you something.”  
Frank’s frown changed. “Is he cheating on me?”   
I almost wanted to laugh because the notion was ridiculous, but I didn’t laugh because I was about to tell Frank that his boyfriend was going to die, and probably very soon. “No. But.”   
The words felt dry and thick on my tongue. “He, uh. His cancer came back, Frankie.”  
Frank blinked, “Shit. What the hell?” He grabbed at the back of a chair, lowering himself down.  
I nodded, my throat felt closed up. “It’s not good.” I was stalling. I wanted Frank to ask so that I wouldn’t have to just tell him.  
“How 'not good'?”  
“Um. Two-months-to-live-not-good.”  
Frank’s eyes went wide. He didn’t talk for a while. “He’s got…”  
“Well. It was two months… two and a half months ago.”  
His expression went from shock to anger immediately. I flinched when he leaned forward in his chair, as if about to spring up so that he could cross the short distance and punch me in the face, “You mean he was diagnosed two and a half months ago?” I nodded.   
He sprung up then, just like I thought he would, but then the anger seemed to dissipate. “Why the hell didn’t he tell me?”   
My heart ached because I was already in a lot of pain and to see my best friend get all of the same shit sprung on him so suddenly hurt. It hurt because I knew that there was nothing I could do to reverse it. I couldn’t fix it; I couldn’t take away the pain. Not my pain, not his pain. “He thought it would be better if you didn’t know.”  
“Better?” He scoffed, the anger returning. He was on a rollercoaster. We’d all been through that. It had been a lot easier for me, for Mom and Dad and even Gerard himself, though, because we had been given more time to go through it. Weeks, months. For Frank, things went a lot faster. The end was a lot closer.  
Not the end of the pain. The end of Gerard’s life.  
“In what way would me not knowing possibly make things better? Did he think it would be better when I found out that he’d died? When I’d call him or whatever and you’d pick up just to tell me that my boyfriend--who I thought was perfectly fucking healthy—had died?” Frank was almost panting now, breath labored and uneven. He was close to tears. It scared me. I had never seen Frank cry before.  
I sighed; my entire body felt heavy. I wanted to pull Frank in for a hug but I was afraid he’d hurt me. His hands were balled into fists at his sides. “I don’t know, Frank. I’m sorry. He was just trying to do what he thought was best--”  
“He’s an asshole.” Frank spat at me, and then he was walking out of the kitchen. I didn’t have the motivation to ask him where he was going. “Your brother is a selfish fucking prick.”  
And I found that I couldn’t defend Gerard against that statement. I couldn’t grab Frank and tell him that Gerard wasn’t being selfish.  
Because Gerard had been very selfish.  
The night of Gerard’s second diagnosis, Frank had come over to our house for dinner. It was supposed to sort of be an official meet the parents kind of dinner, even though Frank had already met both Mom and Dad a few times in passing. The dinner was awkward, but not because Mom and Dad didn’t approve of Frank. They were still in shock.  
Before Frank arrived, Gerard and I got into an argument, which also contributed to the awkwardness of the dinner.  
It had started with a simple question, “Are you going to tell Frank tonight?”  
It had ended in a shouting match that lasted until a mere five minutes before Frank walked in, a big grin on his face that looked impossibly out of place among the Way family.  
“It’ll ruin everything, Mikey! Everything!” Gerard had screamed at me. “I don’t want to ruin things.” His voice dropped, he was still glaring at me but there were tears in his eyes. “I like him so much. I’m not gonna throw things away over a stupid thing like cancer.”  
“A stupid thing like cancer?” I scoffed, “You’re dying, Gerard! This isn’t some stupid little thing you can just put off and ignore!”   
He grabbed an action figure off of his shelf and threw it at my head. I still have a scar from it. “I just want something good for the last two months of my life, Mikey. God! Is that too much to fucking ask for?”  
We both stood there for a long time, then, silent but seething with anger. It wasn’t fair that Gerard wasn’t going to tell Frank. I wanted to yell at Gerard again. I wanted to tell him that he needed to take Frank’s feelings into account. That he’d be so, incredibly hurt when he finally did find out; that it would be better to just get that over with, to give Frank time to accept the fact that his boyfriend was dying.  
But before I could say any of that, Gerard asked me to leave, “I need to change. Frank’s gonna be here soon.”  
I nearly told Frank about the cancer that night, when he walked in the front door and Gerard was still downstairs in his bedroom. But then Gerard came up, hurried because he probably knew I would try something if I was left alone with Frank long enough.  
And when they pulled each other into an embrace, Gerard’s back to me, I saw the way Frank’s eyes closed, the way he grinned even though he wasn’t aware of anyone looking, the way he kissed my brother on the cheek as he pulled away.  
Suddenly, I wasn’t hopping to tell Frank the news. Because if I had been in Gerard’s position, I wouldn’t have done anything different.  
What they had wasn’t something Gerard wanted to risk losing.  
I understand his selfishness.


	9. Selfless

Gerard liked to be cared for.  
One summer, he came home from school with mono. With both parents working for most of the day, Gerard became my full-time job. I hated it.  
Gerard, on the other hand, didn't even mind the sore throat or the fatigue or the aching in his muscles. "Y'know I think I like being sick." He confessed to me one night, "It's nice having people bring me everything I need. I like not having to move."  
A few years later, he was bed ridden again, but this time the fatigue was a side effect of cancer.  
He smiled at me as I brought him something--I don't remember what. "Y'know that one time I said I liked being sick?"  
I nodded. There was a sinking feeling in my gut.  
But Gerard was still smiling. "It's still true." He shrugged, "Knowing I'm dying soon kinda puts a damper on it, but it's still nice to be waited on."  
Brendon, Gerard’s last boyfriend before Frank, had started his relationship with Gerard right in the heat of the battle. He was a sweet guy, always taking care of Gerard. He ended up kind of becoming an extension of our family, constantly in the house, running up and down the stairs at Gerard’s request. We all loved him for that. Especially Gerard. It was the closest I’d ever seen him to being in love before he met Frank.   
Near the end of Gerard’s first fight with cancer, while he was staying at the hospital, Brendon managed to sneak past the family only rule time after time, and when Gerard had the strength to talk, that was what he talked about. How much Brendon did for him. How much he cared for him.   
It brought him to tears one night, after Brendon finally said goodnight with a kiss to Gerard’s forehead.   
“It feels good to have someone do all that for me, y’know?” Was all he had said when I asked why he was crying. He’d been having a good day.  
Gerard didn’t get any of that with Frank, though.   
Not to say that Frank wouldn’t have gone to the lengths Brendon went--he would have gone further, I’m sure of it. It was just that he was unaware of how much care Gerard required. He didn’t realize that trekking up the stairs to get himself a bottled water was a lot to ask of Gerard on some nights.   
On the bad nights, Frank didn’t tuck Gerard into his bed and talk with him until he fell asleep. Frank didn’t even know that Gerard had bad nights--at least not to the full extent that the rest of us knew.  
There were countless days on which Gerard just didn’t feel like doing anything--moving, talking, thinking--because it all took such a toll on him. But he couldn’t express to Frank that he wasn’t just being a grumpy basement dweller, that he had serious issues that were holding him back.   
So he didn’t get Frank’s sympathies, didn’t get the special treatment he’d gotten from Brendon, didn’t get that immense care and concern he usually enjoyed so much when he was sick.   
At least, not from Frank. He still got it from me, from Mom and Dad. And he expressed his gratitude almost every night.   
“I’m glad you haven’t gotten sick of waiting on me.” He told me, on a bad night, just after Frank had left, nearly two months after the second diagnosis.  
I laughed but the sound came out weak, “Oh, I get sick of it sometimes.”  
Gerard scrunched his nose, pulling at the blankets around him. I was sat on the side of the bed. “Sorry.”  
But I shook my head, “Not your fault. And I love you, so it doesn’t matter. I’ll take care of you whether I’m sick of it or not.”   
“Thank you.” He paused for a while, and after a minute or two I thought he was drifting asleep even though his eyes were still open. But then he looked at me, “Y’know sometimes it’s really frustrating that he doesn’t know.”   
It took all of my strength not to blurt something out like, ‘Well tell him, then!’   
“Like when he wants to go out and I don’t and he thinks it’s just because I’m shy or lazy or whatever.” He shivered and I made a mental note to turn the heat up just a tick once he was asleep. “It just sucks that he doesn’t understand.”   
Again, I wanted to say something. ‘Well tell him, then!’  
“But I don’t want him to understand. I want things to stay like this. Things are good like this. We’re good.”   
Despite Gerard’s positive words, there wasn’t a smile on his face. On a lot of nights, the smile dropped when Frank left or when Gerard got home from Frank’s house. It wasn’t really that Gerard never smiled when Frank wasn’t around. He smiled a lot, actually. It was at night that the smile usually went away, when he laughed less and became more somber. After an exhausting day, that was normal.   
I liked to see Gerard smile, wrapped up in blankets in his bed in the morning because he hadn’t yet mustered the strength to get up for breakfast. Some mornings, I’d bring him his breakfast. I sat and ate with him and the conversations we had those mornings were some of my favorite we’d ever had.  
It made me want to cry sometimes, though. I loved Gerard for being like that--all smiling and joking even when he didn’t have the strength to leave his bedroom. But I hated that it had to be that way, that he couldn’t be all smiling and joking without the threat--no, the promise--of a young death looming over him.  
There had always been this fear I had that when he smiled, when he laughed or cracked a joke or told me he felt fine, it was just a front. I was afraid that when he was alone, with no one caring for him in that moment, even before the day had begun, the smile dropped and the laughter faded because he didn’t have anyone to please.   
I didn’t want him to be smiling for everyone else. I wanted him to be smiling for himself. I wanted him to say he was happy because he genuinely felt happy, not just to make his loved ones that much less concerned or depressed.  
With Frank, the smiling front never faltered. With such a huge secret, Gerard couldn’t afford to let it falter. If Frank caught on to Gerard’s pain, to his aches and constant exhaustion and the way it was so hard for him to smile sometimes, then he would know and--as far as Gerard was concerned--everything would go to shit. Everything would be somehow ruined.  
I often tried to tell him that Frank wouldn’t let that happen. That Frank would care for him, would still love him, would understand that he sometimes had to sit the day out.  
But Gerard never listened.  
“I want to give him something good, Mikey. He’s always worried about his parents or his job or money or whatever. Nothing else ever works out for him. I want this to work out for him. At least for as long as it can. I don’t want him to have to worry.  
I want him to have something good for once.”


	10. Death

The last thing Gerard ever said to me was, “I love you, Mikey.”   
That wasn’t a coincidence. It had become a habit in his final weeks, to mumble at least one I love you to each person in the room before he drifted off to sleep.   
“I don’t want my last words to be something stupid.” He had explained, on one of his last days, his words slow and weak, “I don’t want it to be like…” He paused for a long time until finally coming up with, “Like, ‘Bring me soup when I wake up’ or something, y’know?” After a small chuckle, he added, “Plus it’s good to let everyone know I really do love them. Y’know I love you, Mikey, right?” I nodded. It was hard to see him like that.  
His last night was five nights after that conversation.  
He died in the early morning. There had been some warning from the doctors that it could happen that night, but they’d said that at least five times in the past three weeks, so I didn’t bother to mention that to Frank when he called on Gerard’s last evening, held up at his apartment because he was low on money and his car had broken down. He asked if I could come pick him up.  
I had said no.   
I told him he needed to rest. He got angry with me. But I was convinced that this wasn’t it--this wasn’t the night that it would happen.   
I hated myself for not going and picking Frank up when Gerard flatlined that following morning, around ten AM.   
When it happened, I was in the room with Mom and a couple cousins. None of us were really talking. I was sitting in the chair next to the bed, holding Gerard’s hand. I knew he wasn’t conscious of the touch, but it felt necessary anyway.   
A doctor rushed in, just as Mom sobbed hard, just once, no actual tears in her eyes. She was beyond tears.  
She pulled me up out of my chair--I was like a rag doll--and into her arms, and we just stood there in a tight hug as two more of the hospital staff entered the room. One of my cousins was crying, the other too young to really understand what had happened. They left after a moment, out into the hall, and I had the overwhelming urge to go with them. I didn’t want to be next to his body.   
It wasn’t him anymore. It was an empty shell.  
He wasn’t in there.  
“C’mon, Mikey.” My mom whispered to me, after another solid minute. “Let’s go get your Dad.”   
Dad began to tear up when he saw us because he knew just by the sight, knew by the way we were huddled next to each other, knew by the way our eyes looked utterly drained.  
Possibly the most painful part about it all--besides the loss of Gerard--was informing those who weren’t there, those who weren’t in close touch with any of us, those who had never even been informed that Gerard was sick again.   
The worst was Frank. The silence after I choked the words out, “Frank. I’m so sorry. I should have picked you up. I’m sorry. It… it happened.”  
I had been afraid that he would blow up at me, like he had a couple of times already in the past week, start yelling and cussing at me and sobbing angrily. But nothing. Just even, slow breathing. And that’s all he wanted right then. The sound of our breaths on an otherwise empty line. He couldn’t hear Gerard’s breath anymore and he’d missed the final intakes, the last exhale. He could at least listen to mine.  
I was sad and I was angry with myself for what I had said the night before, “Nah, he’ll be fine through the night. If your car isn’t fixed by tomorrow night, I’ll come and pick you up. Just get some rest.” It was hard to keep the angry and mournful tears in. So I didn’t.  
Coming home after leaving the hospital wasn’t as strange as I had expected it to be. Gerard’s room had been unoccupied for a few weeks by then, anyway. It was easy to pretend that it was still only empty because he was away--just away, not dead.  
And I nearly let myself slip into that fantasy. I’m glad I didn’t. I would have ended up like Frank, pretending my brother had never even died. That the room next to mine had always been empty--just an extra room in a house with not enough people to fill it.  
It was weird thinking about the fact that eventually, my parents would pack up all of his stuff--all those comic books and action figures and all of his dirty t-shirts and ripped jeans. And it would all just sit there in a bunch of boxes in the attic. I thought about how maybe they’d turn his room into something else. Dad had always wanted a study.   
They never did that, though. It was an idea that had rolled around in their minds for a while, but when I moved out a year later, they decided to use my room for Dad’s study instead. I was fine with that. Gerard would have thrown a fit if he had been told his room was going to be turned into a study. “But it’s my room!” he would have said, even when he knew he would no longer be using it. I expressed that to my mom one time. She actually laughed, and it made me feel like maybe things weren’t going to hurt that much forever. We could heal a bit. Accept things for how they are.  
For a while, I was convinced that the gaping hole would close up eventually. It would leave a scar, sure, but it would be healed.  
I was wrong about that.


	11. Aftermath

Not as much changed about the Way family as I had anticipated.  
We were all a bit more sad for a while, but the way we interacted stayed the same most of the time. There was no sudden revelation now that he was gone, no abrupt shift in the way we looked at each other or those around us. Any changes or realizations that our family gained had happened gradually, over the course of both of Gerard’s battles.  
It was sort of like watching a movie, the plot building and building, tension growing until finally the climax scene came, only it wasn’t very well executed. The actors played the climax down, making the final release, that blow we’d been waiting for, seem a lot less dramatic than it should have been.  
Not to say it didn’t sting to have Gerard ripped from us. It hurt like hell.  
But things between the three of us didn’t change. We still loved each other just as much, we still had the same conversations, we still clung to each other for support when the pain became a bit too intense.  
Gerard had always been concerned about how we would hold up when he was gone. The first time around, he’d actually asked Mom and Dad if they were going to get a divorce. They’d laughed and assured him that a divorce was the last thing they’d get—they needed each other. But Gerard still worried about it, even when he was diagnosed the second time, even in his final weeks in the hospital.  
He was worried about me, too. Both of us were prone to depression, and we’d both done quite a good job of keeping it at bay the second time he was diagnosed. That didn’t keep him from worrying, of course. In the hospital sometime during the second to last week, on a night when we were the only two in the room, he’d asked me to promise I wouldn’t hurt myself. It was a hard thing to promise because I knew the pain after he was gone would probably be enough to drown out anything he’d asked of me. But I promised him anyway.  
That promise held me up for a long time after he was gone. There were nights that I couldn’t sleep, that I just had to keep thinking over and over, he didn’t want you to hurt yourself, he didn’t want you to hurt yourself, don’t hurt yourself, because old high school habits come back easily if you let them.  
For a long time, I stopped drinking alcohol because alcoholism ran in our family and Gerard had once told me “Never become an alcoholic, Mikey. Never.” It had been a year or two before he was first diagnosed with cancer, when he came home from his second year of college with a drinking problem that had started back in high school and ended only a short time after he’d said that to me. I’ve seen what alcoholism did to Gerard. I don’t ever want to be reduced to that.  
The biggest mark Gerard left on me was that hole, which he’d filled in his life and left open and gaping in his death. I mostly felt it in the first year or so after his death, when I came home from the comic store with something really awesome that I knew Gerard would love and went to open his door instead of mine before realizing that there would be no one in there to show. When I would be sitting on my bed with punk rock music blasting loud because Mom and Dad were out, reading a magazine with some rock star I was only vaguely familiar with on the cover, and I’d notice the lack of Gerard’s commentary on the video game he’d be playing.  
The feeling of something important being missing was impossible to ignore at first, but after a long time, it began to recede into the back of my mind. I could still feel it if I thought about it—if I thought about him. But when I was occupied, mind working and turning over something that wasn’t my brother, then I was numb to the pain.  
In the four years since Gerard’s death, I’ve found that the most important thing was that—accepting the fact that it happened, accepting the fact that it brought me pain and that it always would bring me pain, and then having the strength to move on with life.  
Not forgetting about it, not shutting it out of my thoughts, but continuing to move through life—continuing to actually live. Putting myself at a standstill wouldn’t bring Gerard back and it definitely wasn’t going to do anything to help my state of mind.  
And I really hope that Frank has learned that by now. He certainly hadn’t learned that by the time he up and left, without a word to me or anyone we were mutually friends with.  
Before Frank left, he seemed to be just where I avoided being—at a standstill.  
He took on the pain with anger, lingered over it, let it stop him from living. He stopped going out. One of his band mates told me that he’d even refused to play gigs for a while. He wasn’t that cool laid back guy he’d been when Gerard was alive.  
He was high-strung, an emotional wreck at times. While he used to be forgiving to a point where people sometimes walked all over him, he was intolerant after Gerard’s death.  
That’s why we had fought the morning after Gerard died. He got about five steps into my bedroom and I had said, “You’re really quiet,” or something to that effect.  
He’d stopped in his tracks when he heard me, spitting out words with a near snarl on his face, “I think I’m allowed to be.”  
I shrugged, “Didn’t say you weren’t, just. Observing.”  
And then, out of nowhere, there was a fist swinging toward my face and I was stumbling backwards, tripping on a pair of shoes, just so I wouldn’t be taken out by Frank’s tattooed knuckles. When I steadied myself, he was glaring at me, nearly panting with anger.  
“Fuck you, Mikey. Fuck you.” seemed to be all he could manage to push through his clenched teeth.  
My hands went up instinctively next to my head. He looked like he was ready to tackle me. I was more shocked than anything. This was the guy who had barely batted an eye when I walked in on him naked, who had claimed to have not gotten in a fight since high school, who used to curl up on Gerard’s and my lap while the three of us watched movies together. He was like an animal now, though, fingers curled tightly into fists at his sides, eyes ringed red with what was probably a mix of anger and deep, deep sadness.  
“I could have seen him one more time.” He was yelling now, but his body seemed to relax. In a way that made him appear totally exhausted, spent with the amount of emotion running through him.  
There were tears spilling from his eyes. “Who knows what he could have said to me? I could have kissed him again!” His body tensed again, but this time with a sob. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have anything to say. I was angry at myself, too. He had the right to be angry.  
“You were too goddamn lazy to get off your ass and come pick me up, and I didn’t get to see him before he died!”  
The next sound was that of my clay mini-sculpture hitting the floor, shattering, and then the next was that of the door slamming.  
The second fight Frank and I had after Gerard’s death was at Frank’s apartment, three days after the first fight. I was there to check up on him, with a dish my mom had made. I was worried that he would continue his new habit of forgetting to eat.  
I found him still asleep in his bed. It was nearly four in the afternoon.  
“Didn’t get to sleep ‘til late.” He explained, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.  
“Were you out?” I asked, because I hadn’t heard from him since he’d stormed out of my house three days earlier; he hadn’t been answering my calls.  
“No. Just. Didn’t want to sleep?” He was sitting on the side of his bed, feet swung over the edge, elbows resting on his knees and hands rubbing at his tired eyes. He didn’t look good. But he probably felt worse than he looked.  
“Why not?” I wanted to take a seat--I was just standing there uncomfortably with the dish in my hands.  
“I keep having dreams. About. Y’know.”  
I nodded. I’d already had a couple dreams about Gerard as well. It was disappointing to wake up from those dreams, suddenly thrust into a reality that no longer included my brother.  
Frank’s voice sounded hollow. “I guess that’s what happens when you see someone every day for six months and then suddenly you don’t.”  
He sat there, hands over his face for a minute or two and I just watched him, wondering if he was crying. When the silence became too thick, I mumbled, “I brought you some food. Just wanted to make sure you’re eating.”  
Finally, his hands pulled away from his face. But only so that he could glare at me.  
“I’m not a five-year-old. I know how to take care of myself.”  
I frowned, “I know. Just looking out for you.”  
He stood, taking the dish from my hand and walking right past me, into the kitchen. I followed him at a safe distance. I was afraid that once his hands were free he was going to try to punch me again.  
When the dish was stored in the fridge, he turned to me and shrugged, “I’m fine, don’t need checking up on. Thanks for stopping by, I guess.” And then he just stood there, arms folded over his chest, eyes set on the ground as if it had personally offended him. He was waiting for me to leave.  
But I couldn’t just walk out. “Frank?” It took a few seconds, but he finally looked up at me. “Why are you being such a…” I searched for the right word, “such a prick?”  
He looked like a sulking teenager, the way his lips pouted, eyes rolling, leaning against the counter. “Fuck you. This hasn’t been the most pleasant experience.”  
“Yeah, no, I get that. Believe me. I really, really get that. In fact, I think you might be forgetting that you’re not the only one that gets it.” I don’t really know what happened, but something inside of me snapped. I was yelling without really realizing it.  
“You’re not the only one he left behind, Frank. There are a lot of us. Me, Mom, Dad, relatives, college friends…” I continued. “You’re not the only one that’s in a lot of pain right now! But you know what? You’re the only one acting like a complete and utter dick.”  
“Maybe I wouldn’t be such a dick to you if you’d actually told me!” He was screaming back now, all up in my face, clenched fists like before. It took a lot of guts to stand my ground and not recede behind a piece of furniture for safety. “You know, before he only had three weeks to live!” He took a step forward, and suddenly, he had a hand twisted in my t-shirt, “Maybe I wouldn’t be such a dick if you had gotten off of your goddamned ass and gave me a ride to the hospital!”  
I was shoved backwards, then, hitting a wall and staying there, only so that he wouldn’t touch me again. He was crying angry, bitter tears.  
“Maybe,” He screamed, “I wouldn’t be such a motherfucking dick if you’d realize that no one gave me any fucking time to take any of it in! You told me what was gonna happen and then it was happening! I didn’t have time to come to terms with it! I didn’t have months and months like you did!” His face was red, veins popping at the side of his neck and forehead, spit flying from his mouth, tears from his eyes.  
I was too afraid to talk. He just stood there for a while, seething and crying and pulling at his own hair.  
It must have been a full three minutes later that he wiped his tears messily on the sleeve of his t-shirt and then shook his head, stammering out, “I don’t--I don’t want to talk about him any--anymore.” And then he was leaving the kitchen, disappearing into his bedroom and slamming the door. Almost immediately, there was a knock on the front door.  
I opened it on my way out, finding the apartment building manager with a noise complaint. I apologized for myself and for Frank, and took off with a short, “I’m leaving, so there won’t be any more noise.”  
After that day, I never heard Frank talk directly about my brother again. He sometimes talked around the subject, getting most of the way through a sentence before stopping abruptly just before where ‘him’ or ‘Gerard’ should have been.  
I’m glad I haven’t dealt with the pain in that way. I have a sinking feeling that it messed Frank up, keeping all of that bottled up inside, treating the issue like it didn’t matter or exist.  
Acting as if none of it ever happened. Picking himself up and relocating, leaving not a single trace, not even with the manager of his old apartment building.  
That’s where I had gone, the day I found out Frank had left without telling anyone. I’d gone up to his room only to find it locked, which was odd. Frank never remembered to lock his door.  
So, after a few minutes of banging and chanting his name, I went down to the lobby area.  
“Iero? Moved out yesterday.”  
“What? Are you sure?”  
A nod.  
“Do you know where he--”  
“Didn’t say. But--oh. What did you say your name was?”  
“Mikey Way.”  
Another nod. She asked me to wait for a moment and disappeared into a door behind the long desk. When she returned, there was an envelope in her hands. “Said you’d be coming by. Begged me to give this to ‘ya when you did.”  
It was heavier than I had expected it to be and despite my eagerness, I waited until I was back in my car to tear it open.  
A ring fell out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave me a comment telling me how you liked (or didn't like lmao) the story! Your comment doesn't even have to make sense I just love reading comments and I'm thirsty for attention!! Yay!


End file.
